


Wish You Were Here

by cjmarlowe



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Multi, Voyeurism, casefic, dealing with the future, dealing with the past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-31
Updated: 2008-08-31
Packaged: 2017-10-19 19:22:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/204360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cjmarlowe/pseuds/cjmarlowe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean's back from hell, Sam's still in limbo and Jo needs something more. Everyone's got issues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wish You Were Here

**Author's Note:**

> Written post season three.

Sam isn't sure how they're suddenly crossing into Nebraska when last thing he remembers they were heading Oklahoma way, planning to ride into Hadry just in time for supper. He yawns, stretches till he runs out of leg room, then reaches for the timeworn map they keep between the seats, stained and marked up and torn along the creases.

"Change of plans?" he says around another yawn, watching as a highway sign streaks past, too close to read the numbers.

"Something like that," says Dean, and taps his fingers against the steering wheel in time with Phil Rudd.

He's got a mark on the side of his neck, bruised and scratched and just starting to fade, and Sam wonders if it's from the waitress in Salt Lake City, the receptionist in Bedingfield, the legal clerk in Leaf Rapids. Two months since Dean came back to him and as far as Sam can tell all he's done is fought and fucked his way across the Midwest, state after state, leaving Sam to watch and wonder if the Dean he risked everything for ever really came back.

Maybe Dean's already done Oklahoma; it's getting hard to keep track.

"So what's in Nebraska?"

From what Sam can see out the passenger-side window there's not a lot besides weak fall sunshine and clumpy, dying roadside grass.

"I got a call about a job while you were busy snoring over there, Sleeping Beauty," Dean says like it's nothing. "Something's setting things on fire in Kernsville."

"Teenagers?" suggests Sam, tracing his finger along the map until he finds it, a faint speck nestled up close to the border. That's what it was the last time, and the time before that, and probably the time before that, too.

He watches Dean out of the corner of his eye and doesn't let the faint spark of hope ignite into anything else.

"Maybe," says Dean, the word slow and dubious, and maybe he actually wants this to be a hunt. Maybe Sam's not the only one who's itching to get back into it. But then he adds, "I was here with Dad once; there's one hell of a roadhouse outside town," and all that's left to wonder is whether this one's a fight or this one's a fuck.

 _What do you think's going to happen if you don't keep this up?_ Sam wants to ask him, but he thinks he already knows that answer and part of him just doesn't want to have to hear it.

"Should probably check it out anyway," he says, folding the map and putting it back where he found it. It's never stopped feeling wrong that they're not stopping to hunt - really, there's only been the in-and-out job in Kenosha, and that was all Sam - and he feels like he's not just the only one who wants it anymore, but the only one who even notices.

"Never know," says Dean, whistling as the song comes to an end, popping the tape out without even looking. "Grab me something, Sammy. Your choice."

"Since when?" says Sam. For a couple of moments he actually expects an answer, then quickly rummages through the tapes before Dean changes his mind. They're still Dean's cassettes, so they're still Dean's music, but there's a measure of satisfaction in it when Sam pops in _And Justice For All_ and remembers an overnighter between Dallas and Charlotte when it played through enough times for Sam to memorize the lyrics. That's something that's all his.

"How much further?" he asks as he leans against the door.

"Dunno," says Dean, tapping the steering wheel again. "Maybe an hour?"

"Wake me up when we get there," says Sam and closes his eyes. Where Dean goes these days, Sam follows.

:::

It's called the Woodpecker Inn, only part of the neon sign's burnt out. Sam knows the moment he sees it that even if it hadn't been the only motel on this stretch of road - and it is, the rest of the highway outside town dotted with beds of dying flowers and farm supply dealerships - Dean would've pulled in just for that.

Sam gets out and stretches his legs the moment Dean stops in front of the front office, pressing his hands against hot black metal and popping vertebrae one by one. Dean tosses his keys in the air, catches them with a snap of his wrist, and heads inside to get them a room.

They don't stay long, only long enough to throw their bags on the floor of room fourteen, to secure the door and window, then Dean's hustling them back out to the car again. Not for drinks, though, so at least there's that. They find a mom and pop diner right there on the main drag into town, fading sign and vinyl booths and all, and Dean's flirting with the waitress before Sam can even get his ass in the seat.

He manages to pick up an unsecured wireless signal, probably from the walk-up across the street, and looks up a local article on the fires. It still reeks of mischief to him, just small-scale fires leaving behind some rough mark that looks more like a scribble than anything esoteric Sam's ever seen. If it weren't for the fact that Dean took the call he probably wouldn't be pursuing it at all.

He doesn't like the ones with fire. Never has.

"So where do you want to start?"

"With the apple pie," says Dean, his eyes still on the waitress, "and I bet she makes a mean milkshake."

"With the _case_ , Dean?"

"Right," he says, stretching out long with his fingers laced behind his head. "Aren't you the eager beaver? Well, you can go ahead and plot all the sightings, if you're that anxious to get started."

"Dean, this is your hunt," says Sam. "You're the one who found it. Don't you think you might want to take an interest?"

"I am taking an interest, Sammy," he says. "I'm taking an interest in dinner. Can't very well hunt on an empty stomach, can I?"

But as Sam pulls out the local map they got from the motel office and starts plotting the sightings with thick black marks, Dean's eyes rarely leave the paper, and it kindles that spark inside him Sam's been trying not to poke at.

"Doesn't look like much of a pattern to me," he says when he's done, capping the marker after plotting the last one and wrapping himself bodily around the map as the waitress serves up their coffee so they don't look like the creepy ghost hunters they are.

"Well, they're not exactly drawing the Mona Lisa on the town, but that looks like a definite cluster," says Dean, four packets of sugar in his coffee and spraying the edge of the map with granules.

"Yeah, a town-shaped cluster," says Sam. "I don't think this is telling us anything."

"Never really expected it to," says Dean, stirring and sipping. "How long you think pie takes anyway?"

"Why are we here, Dean?" says Sam, folding up the map and sticking it in his front pocket, closing his laptop and pushing it aside.

"Because this is what we do, Sam."

Sam wonders if they're both really thinking of the same thing when Dean says 'this'.

:::

Sam gets why they've really come to Kernsville as soon as they finally step inside the 'kickass roadhouse', and he doesn't let Dean pretend it's a coincidence.

"You could've warned me," he hisses in his ear, trying to put a passable smile on his face.

"If I'd warned you, you never would've set foot outside the 'Pecker Inn," Dean hisses back, and steps up to the bar to greet Jo Harvelle.

Who promptly slaps him in the face.

"Not that I don't appreciate the foreplay," he says, "but don't you think we should get the hellos out the way first?"

"God damn you, Dean Winchester," she says, leaning forward with both hands on the bar, knuckles white with the pressure. "You think you can just come waltzing in here after everything without so much as a phone call?"

"I wouldn't call that a waltz," he says. "More of a saunter, with a little swagger there at the end." She glares at him until he relents. "Your mother called me," he says. "What have you gotten yourself into, Jo?"

"Goddammit," she says, throwing her towel on the bar. "Bobby Singer needs to learn to keep his damn mouth shut. Tony, I'm taking my break!"

She leads Dean into the stockroom behind the bar, Sam slipping behind like his shadow, and for a minute she looks like she doesn't know whether to kiss Dean or deck him. Sam could've told her he probably would've enjoyed both.

It would be _Jo_. It isn't enough that Sam's been off his game for weeks now. No, it has to be Jo, who Sam isn't even sure he can look in the eye. Jo, who'll let herself get sucked right into the black hole of Dean without batting an eye, who Sam can't warn because her trust in him was stripped away a long time ago.

"I don't know what the hell she thinks she's doing, getting involved, but I can handle this on my own," Jo says finally. "Besides, from what I hear you boys aren't really up for riding to anyone's rescue."

"Honey, we're _always_ up for riding to the rescue," says Dean. Without any more warning than that he reaches out, grabs hold of her left wrist, pushes her sleeve up to her elbow. She makes a token effort to pull it away again but the fresh white bandages are already on display.

Something's setting things on fire in Kernsville and it's not teenagers.

"I never told Bobby about that, so I sure as hell know he never told my mother."

"Lucky guess," says Dean when he lets her go. "Don't worry, I’m not going to tell her either. So how about you fill us in on this hunt?"

The blackmail, Sam thinks, is implied.

"I can handle it," she says, shoving her sleeve back down to her wrist, "just like I handled the other three in the area, so you two can just go back to doing whatever it is you do now. I didn't ask anyone to come."

"Yeah, actually, I think we're done with what we were doing," says Dean, which is sure as hell news to Sam. "You really think I want another call from your mother telling me you've been incinerated by some pissed off spirit because we thought we'd have a better time in Texas? I think I'd be safer back in hell."

Jo inhales sharply but Sam's used to it now, lets the comment pass. It's better when he says it than when he tries to keep it in.

Sam's not even a part of this conversation, just a not-so-innocent bystander, hanging back by the doorway and poised for a quick exit as soon as Jo's gaze finally falls on him. But it never does, which he's pretty sure is anything but an accident.

"I get off shift at two," she says, coming to a belated, abrupt decision. "You can come back then and I'll show you what I've got on this thing. If you're gonna stay around town I can't stop you, but don't get in my way."

"Actually I thought I might stick around for a few drinks, see the sights," says Dean, finally showing her the empty, cocky grin that Sam's so familiar with these days.

"And what sights might those be?" she says, posing in the doorway, waiting.

"Only the best ones," he says, and she leads them back out into the bar again, slips in behind it and lets Dean claim one of the stools.

Sam doesn't say anything to either of them, orders his beer from someone else and stays in the shadows with one hand in his pocket until he's buzzed enough not to feel the pangs of regret quite so sharply anymore. He doesn't remember all of it but he knows damn well what happened between him and Jo, and he's pretty sure it's the kind of thing that can't be forgiven and forgotten.

There's something different about coming someplace where Dean knows someone, where they collide head on with Life Before, and Sam wishes to hell he knew what it meant.

He leaves before two, slipping out when no one's watching. Dean'll know where he went, and Jo doesn't need to.

:::

In some ways it's like it used to be before Dean's deal came due. But there's a desperation to it now, like Dean doesn't just want to find someone to spend the night with, he's afraid of what'll happen if he doesn't. Sam knows anger when he sees it, and he knows comfort when he sees it, and now he knows what it looks like when the two get all tangled up.

Sam's been through his own hell, but it wasn't Hell, capital H, and he can only speculate what it's really like. Dean's never told him, and Sam's always shied away from asking, like the question itself will do as much damage as the place. It doesn't take a genius to know it's bad, you just have to see the haunted expression Dean gets when he thinks Sam isn't looking. When he thinks no one is.

He waits up, but three in the morning passes with no Dean and Sam's eyes are closing in spite of him. Assuming he comes home at all - and Dean almost always does - then five a.m. will bring another nightmare and Sam needs to be ready for it.

Dean's not afraid of the unknown anymore, he's afraid of the known, and Sam doesn't know what the hell he can do about that.

:::

They meet at noon in the diner Sam found, faded decor but fresh food and fast service, and no one curious enough about their business to stick around long enough to hear it. Jo's already given Dean the bare bones of the case so Sam's playing catch-up as quickly and quietly as he can. The names of the witnesses. The times of the fires. He feels like he's eavesdropping, hardly even wants to make notes in case he's called on his intrusion.

"So you didn't talk about this last night," says Dean, reaching for her bandaged arm. Jo snatches it away. "You know we need to know."

"It's the same as all the others. I'm fine."

"Yeah? Tell it to your mother."

"Don't you dare," says Jo, and she knows they need to know but it's pretty clear she's not all that happy talking about it.

The thing is, Sam gets why Ellen called, in the abstract way that he understands how normal parents react when their children are in danger, but what he doesn't get is why she called them, called _Dean_. He would've thought, after everything, the Winchesters would be pretty low on her list of white knights.

"I was out three nights ago," Jo says, tugging her sleeve up bit by bit. "I wanted my own photos of the marks, looking for something everyone else didn't think to look at, maybe find some kind of pattern." Dean nods. So does Sam, but she's not looking at Sam. "I was on Lakeshore and it just...." She shrugs; the rest is clear on her arm when she uncovers it for them.

"Did you feel anything unusual?"

"You mean besides searing pain?"

"Searing pain isn't unusual when something sets you on fire." Dean should be looking at her arm but he's not, he's watching Jo's face. "Anything else?"

"I thought I felt someone's hand around my wrist," she admits after a moment, "but it was gone too quickly, might've just been my bag catching on it or something."

The mark looks more like scattered matchsticks than any kind of symbol, swollen red lines crossing here and there on the pale skin of her forearm and not triggering any memory, anything at all, in Sam's brain. He wants to get a closer look but doesn't dare.

"Do you have a picture of yours, too?" he asks finally, fixing his eyes on the table instead of her. Jo slides a flash drive over in his direction, only her hand venturing into his range of vision.

"You'll probably get more use out of this than Dean will," she says. She's right about that, but probably for the wrong reasons.

"So we're all thinking spirit?" says Dean.

"That's my working theory," says Jo. "No one's seen an apparition but I can't find lore on anything else that would fit without some other kind of activity too."

"This seems like a pretty classic revenge scenario to me," says Dean. "Some pissed off spirit of a murder victim wants to lash back at their murderer, only they don't know where to start. We've all seen it before."

"Any leads on the symbol?" Sam asks, sliding the flash drive across the table from one hand to the other.

"Nada," says Jo. "Zip. I can't find a mention of it anywhere. I even got Bobby on it but he hasn't called back with anything yet. Seems like he had time to make some _other_ calls, though."

"Do we have anything at all?" says Dean, and Jo bristles.

"I've even checked the god damn museum and art gallery, just in case it was some sort of local thing, but all they've got in there is glazed pottery and folk art saw blades," she says. "And get this: there've been no known murders in the past fifty years."

"None?" says Dean.

"None."

"That right there's a little weird, don't you think?"

Sam shrugs, answering when Jo just glares at Dean. "Could just be it's a small town," he offers. "What about more than fifty years ago?"

"You have to go into the archives to get any further back," she tells him while looking at Dean. "I'm still following up on unexplained deaths and disappearances."

"Or it could be something else entirely."

Yeah, it could be some pyromaniac pixies with dubious artistic taste, but Sam doesn't think that's all too likely. They're on the right track with the spirit notion, he's got a gut feeling about it. He's also got a gut feeling that they're not going to get too much else done at the diner this afternoon.

"I'm going to hit the archives, then," he says, and Jo quickly draws him some sketchy directions on a napkin. Their eyes never meet, not once. "I'll catch up with you two later?"

"You know where to find me," says Dean, and waves him off.

:::

When Sam comes back to the room Dean's stretched out alone on the bed with his face buried in the pillow, but the shower's running and Sam recognizes the t-shirt Jo was wearing when he last saw her.

He digs his toothbrush and shampoo out of his duffel bag and when Jo comes out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel he doesn't do anything more than nod at her as he slips inside. Just because she's not a stranger doesn't mean Sam should treat her any differently than anyone else Dean's brought back to the motel in the past two months.

Sam wonders if she knows she's the latest in a long line, stretching from South Dakota and zigzagging all over the Midwest. He wonders if she knows she could very well be the last. He wonders if Dean knows it either.

When Sam comes back out again twenty minutes later, she's already gone.

:::

"You let him get away with an awful lot, don't you?" says Jo, wandering over to his end of the bar, and for a moment Sam's not even sure she's speaking to him. But there she is, and there he is, and nobody else is near enough to be the object of her attention.

"Dean's Dean," he says after a minute, his gaze skirting away from her eyes. "He's just doing what he does."

He doesn't think he's letting Dean get away with anything so much as burying his own anger down so deep that he doesn't have any other reactions _left_. But at least he's self-aware enough to know it.

"I know you're lying to me," she says, so mildly it almost isn't an accusation except in the way it so clearly is. "Don't know _why_ , but--"

"Don't know what else to say." And even if he knew how to say it, he's not sure he would.

Dean's been living like someone's going to take it away again at any moment and he wants to suck up every bit of life he can, save it all in his head for those long, dark days in hell. And Sam doesn't know how to tell anyone he knows exactly what Dean's doing and why, not even Dean.

He doesn't think Dean gets why it's making him so god damn miserable, either.

"Your brother needs someone to light a fire under his ass."

"Yeah, I think fire's the last thing Dean needs anymore," says Sam, staring at his drink. "We shouldn't have come. You talked to Bobby, he could've come if you needed him."

"Bobby was never going to come and we all know it," says Jo. "Bobby knows I could've done the job on my own."

"Then why?" says Sam. "Why get involved? Why'd he even _tell_ your mother?"

"I was hoping you could tell me that," says Jo, shaking her head. Maybe it's the only reason she's talking to him at all, because her only other option is Dean and she's starting to see just how far that doesn't get her. "That man knows damn well that every time my mother hears I'm on a case she tries to get someone else to take it. She thinks I don't know, but she does."

"I'm sure she knows you don't want--"

"You know what? My mother doesn't know what I want. Your brother doesn't know what I want. And you sure as hell don't know what I want."

"She's your mother. She worries," says Sam, veering from the more dangerous path. "That's what mothers do, isn't it?"

"They also admit when their children are adults and can make their own damn decisions," says Jo, slapping the cloth against the bar, "instead of this pretending I'm on my own where she gets every hunter she knows keeping tabs on me like I'm still a little girl."

"I'm not sure letting their kids grow up is really in a mother's job description," says Sam, scratching his fingernail into the soft wood. But then, he wouldn't know.

"Damn it, Sam, will you look at me?"

He's been looking at her, out of the corner of his eye, in reflections, looking at her hands or hips or hair or breasts. But now he looks up and meets her eyes and tries not to look as guilty as he feels.

"It's not just my mother. None of you ever stopped thinking of me as a kid," she says, meeting him gaze for gaze. He flinches, but then so does she. "I know it wasn't you."

And he knows they're not talking about the case anymore.

The thing is, Sam's been able to push it all away, focus on things that were a lot more pressing and just not dwell on what went down between him and Jo in the bar that night. He'd done worse things that week, and buried those deep down too. But Jo hasn't had that luxury, or maybe she just didn't take advantage of it.

"You're telling me you can look at me and not remember?"

"No," she says with an uncomfortable honesty. "But I'm working on that. Would probably be going better if you were too."

"Winchesters don't work on their issues," he mutters as he pushes back from the bar. "I'm going to go see if Dean needs anything."

Jo reaches to grab his wrist, and even though she doesn't actually make contact he reacts like she has. "He doesn't," she says. "Sam, he doesn't need anything you can give him right now."

"Now who's checking up on who?" he says, snatching his wrist to himself. "Dean will always need what I can give him."

"Dean needs you to stop coddling him," says Jo, backing up a step herself, reaching for a bar rag and idly wiping down the old wood over the fresh scratches.

"I'm not--"

"Like hell you're not," she says. "He thinks you think he's going to break."

He sure as hell doesn't think Dean told her that, but maybe Dean talks too much after someone sucks his brains out through his dick. Or maybe Jo's just talking about things she doesn't know anything about.

"Well maybe he is," says Sam. "In case you hadn't noticed, my brother's kind of fucked up these days."

"Whatever he is right now, you had a part in making it," says Jo, "so if you don't like it, maybe you'd better figure out what to do about it."

Sam thinks he liked it better when they weren't talking, and doesn't look at her again as he turns around and leaves the bar.

:::

Sam doesn't look, he _sees_ , and he thinks there's some kind of important, fundamental difference there. He doesn't plan to see them, he doesn't look in the window for the express purpose of finding them in a compromising position, he just looks in the window of the motel room, blinds open, and there they are.

It's not the same thing.

What he _sees_ , is Dean on his knees, Jo's back against the wall and one knee hooked over his shoulder. He doesn't need to see Dean's tongue to know where it is, what it's doing to her. It doesn't take much imagination to picture it sliding over her, into her, to imagine his teeth grazing her clit, imagine him sucking it between his lips. He can even time it all to the expressions on her face, the clenching of her fists, the hitches in her breath that leave her chest heaving.

Sam can't stop watching, not now, not until Jo's fisting Dean's hair with one hand and the wall sconce behind her with the other and crying out like Dean's tongue's found something previously undiscovered within her. The way Dean's been piling on the experience, maybe it has.

Sam leaves before he sees his brother get off too, which doesn't stop him from wondering whether Dean's going to take her up against the wall, throw her on the bed, let her slip down to the floor and go down on _him_.

He doesn't want to know that much, doesn't want to take it that far. There's a line, one of many, and Sam's not prepared to cross that one.

Five hours later Sam's shaking Dean out of another nightmare, the latest of dozens, and it's like the rest of the evening never even happened.

:::

Sam doesn't like this town. Everything's either too dry or too wet, wooden buildings standing like so much tinder along the main streets and then withering away on the waterfront where the little lake itself looks like it's swollen with infection, dirty foam at the docks and dead plants floating on the surface. He doesn't like it because everything's just a little wrong and Sam doesn't know how to fix it, and he's stuck in this town while everything around him seems to be finally building to something, something he's not sure he's going to like.

Dean and Jo are... he doesn't even know. They might be working the case, checking out the missing persons like they said they would. They might be fucking in the bathroom of the sheriff's station.

And Sam is walking the aging waterfront with a half-assed map in one hand and a coffee in the other, wondering how it all came to this place, this time.

It was never supposed to be like this. Dean was supposed to come back from hell and everything was supposed to be the way it was before, before Sam was killed, before Dad died, before Sam _changed_. Dean was never supposed to go to hell at all.

He almost wishes they'd gone to Oklahoma after all, that he was sipping tequila in some shadowy corner of some shadowy bar waiting for Dean to finish up in the back alley so he can head to the motel with him. He doesn't like it, but it's something he understands. As much as they're on a case right now, Sam doesn't understand what the hell is going on.

But at least there is a case, and if he can't figure out what's going on in his brother's head then at least he's got this. The waterfront's a bust, Sam hasn't found anything of interest at all, but across the lake amid the trees he thinks he spies some houses, maybe cottages, that weren't on any map of the town he's looked at. Maybe it's nothing, but maybe it isn't, and at least with this he has something to show for his afternoon.

When he ambles back to the diner, sun low in the sky and stomach rumbling, the car's already outside and Dean and Jo are laughing over some private joke in the window. Sam almost doesn't go inside, but he's got nowhere else to go.

"We've got four disappearances," says Dean, shoving the files in Sam's direction as soon as he sits down, "and don't ask what Jo had to go through to get them."

"Wasn't planning to," says Sam curtly. "What are those places across the lake?"

"Old summer homes," says Jo immediately, so apparently Sam hasn't discovered something new at all. "Most of them are abandoned now; the lake's not all that scenic anymore. They've even let the trees grow up alongside the highway so they don't have to see the old places when they pass by. People around here just want to remember what they used to have, not what's actually there now. Not that I can really blame them. One of these days I swear someone's going to go in and, owners be damned, they'll just raze them to the ground."

"Any fires?" says Dean, raising an eyebrow at her.

"Two," she says, but she's already shaking her head. "I already looked into it; there were no fatalities in either one. Not even any injuries. The places were just dried up and ready to go at the slightest spark. Probably kids, a dropped cigarette."

"Worth checking out anyway?"

"Didn't I just say I already did?"

"No, you said you looked into it, you didn't say you looked at them," says Sam, but that's just semantics.

"Quit it, geek boy," says Dean, punching him on the shoulder. "If you want to go marching around the lake to poke around in the ruins, be my guest. But it sounds like it'll be a waste of time."

"You think everything's a waste of time these days," Sam snaps, and thinks he sees an approving look from Jo out of the corner of his eye. He doesn't even know why he was looking for it.

"Maybe because it is," says Dean, then gets up and stalks into the bathroom, and Sam's contrite enough to let him.

:::

Dean's chatting up the girl in the real estate office, ostensibly to find out more about those old summer homes though, having seen her, Sam knows better, so he's resigned to downing his beer alone while he waits.

"We need to talk about what happened."

Jo has to be drunk, there's no way this would be happening if she wasn't drunk. But Sam looks in her eyes and knows that they're both stone cold sober.

"We don't have to do this," he says.

"And here your brother always said you were the touchy feely one."

"Not anymore," says Sam. "Dean's the one touching and feeling everything he can get his hands on."

Sam would feel bad about that if it seemed like the comment had any effect on her at all.

"What the hell happened to him, Sam?"

"I don't know."

"I think you're the only one besides Dean who does."

"No really, Jo, _I don't know_. He just came back like this. He's never said one word about what happened."

"Well, I guess I know something about that," she mutters, and Sam's pretty sure he's meant to pick up on exactly what she's talking about. He's pretty sure he's meant to ask.

"And we can keep on not talking about it," he says. "I'd be pretty okay with that."

"I was attacked by _a demon_ , Sam," she says, opening badly-healing wounds with just a few words. "A demon. And I'd be a shit hunter if I couldn't deal with that and move on. Might as well pack it in and go home and play with Barbie and Ken if I can't separate the demon from the man."

Sam wonders, though, if that's not something she's actually done yet. If that is, in fact, what she's in the middle of trying to do, right here and right now.

"I don't remember most of it."

She twists her lips. "Probably better that way."

"Did I...?" He gestures helplessly and hopes the implication is clear, because he doesn't want to say the words. Isn't sure if he can. He knows she ended up tied up, and remembers some of the ugly things that came out of his mouth, but everything before that is a big blank.

"No!" she says. "No. Jesus. No."

He can't be sure she's telling him the truth but it feels true, or maybe he just desperately wants it to be.

" _It_ would have, but it didn't," she adds, making the difference fierce. "You didn't do anything."

"It's not fair I don't remember. To you. It's not fair to you."

Maybe if Sam actually remembered, though, then he could actually get past it. And _that_ doesn't actually have much to do with being fair to Jo at all.

"The job's never been about fair," she says.

Jo talks about the job now like she knows it, not like before when her idea of hunting came from the tall tales of dozens of roadhouse patrons, each trying to outdo the last. She talks about it like she's lived it.

"You were never like this... before."

"You're giving yourself a lot of credit if you think you did this to me, Sam," she says. "I've been going on hunts for nearly two years since you last saw me, and I didn't need either of you to come riding to my rescue at any of them."

"Yeah, well, maybe you're not the one who needed rescuing," says Sam. But she needs something, she's getting something out of this, and Sam hopes that something's what she thinks it is.

:::

Jo's left her bra on the floor, halfway under the bed, and Sam's never understood how someone could leave something like that behind without noticing. Not unless they were in one hell of a hurry.

"Dean?" he says, waiting for some signal that Jo's the only one who's fled.

"Can't a guy clean up in peace," Dean calls from the other side of the bathroom door. "Jesus, Sammy."

"What'd you do, chase her off?" says Sam, picking up the bra and dropping it on Dean's bed like a shameful souvenir.

"I've been trying to get into her pants for years and you think I'm going to chase her off now?" says Dean. He's showered when he comes out of the bathroom, but his hair's a mess and his clothes are rumpled and mismatched.

"Yeah, but this isn't..." says Sam, except he doesn't know what it isn't any more than he knows what it is. "What are you doing?"

"Stay out of it, Sam," says Dean, and Sam flinches even though he knows what Dean's trying to do.

Dean doesn't get that staying out of it is the least safe thing Sam thinks he can do.

And Sam's allowed to be resentful that Jo can come in and enjoy the best parts of Dean and Sam's the one still there afterwards to clean up his messes, to shake him out of his nightmares, to feed him breakfast and make sure that Dean's still really with him every damn morning. And he gets to be resentful that he's put a lot of things on hold and there Dean is, getting every damn thing he wants, even if what he wants isn't what he needs.

"You really want me to stay out of it?"

Dean grabs clean underwear and slams the bathroom door, and that's the only answer Sam gets.

:::

If they ever want to go legit, Sam figures they can get work as private investigators in a heartbeat. Of the four missing persons, they find three of them within two days. All it takes is a Google search to find Mike Barlow, missing fifteen years ago and now working as a lawyer in Los Angeles, with a photo up on the internet and everything. Everything in the Barlow file had pointed to him being a runaway anyway; looks like the were right. Sam has to get into some police databases to find Maggie Gerard and Deanna Semenchuk - Deanna under an alias so that one takes the longest - but even that wasn't too hard. Maggie died three years ago outside Chicago and Deanna - or Lacy, as she apparently likes to be called - is serving time in Kentucky.

That leaves Jennifer Wilcox, and Sam just has a feeling that they're right about this. Ever since Dean did his time in hell, Sam's learned that his feelings about these things are pretty damn good.

Dean's gone off doing whatever it is Dean does when he goes off on his own - Sam doesn't want to think about it too hard, and not because he wants to spare Jo's feelings if Dean's banging the real estate bunny he's been spending an awful lot of time with - so Sam passes off his intel to Jo and lets her run with the Jennifer Wilcox angle. She's got the in in this town, she's made the connections, so she's the best choice to find out anything they can't from the police report, which is usually everything.

And Sam, Sam's got another gut feeling, this time about those houses across the lake - though that's less a gut feeling and more process of elimination - and screw Dean's real estate connection (though in all likelihood Dean's been taking care of that himself), Sam just wants to grab a flashlight and some boots and head over to take a closer look.

Sam just wants to do something he _knows_.

:::

Dean's late, and when he shows up he's got a bloody lip and bruised knuckles.

"Just tell me you didn't do it in my bar," says Jo. "I still have to work there."

"Nah," says Dean, a cocky smile twisting him into someone Sam barely knows, "I just took a little side trip across the county line. Don't shit where you eat and all."

"Yeah, that's really classy," she says, wrinkling her nose in disgust. "That's great, Dean. I hope you had a great time."

"You knew all about what kind of classy I was when you started with me, Jo Harvelle," he says unapologetically.

"Yeah, well maybe I thought you'd changed," she says, which Sam hopes is a clever twisting of the truth and not hopeful sincerity. Dean's changed, but not in the ways a person would hope. "Maybe I thought you'd finally found a reason to change."

"Oh, you do _not_ want to get into this with me," says Dean, his voice dropping to nearly a growl as he stares her down. "You have _no_ idea--"

"Jo, just let him--"

"You're not the only ones who lost something in this god damn war!" She looks like she wants to strike out at them, hit _something_ , but her arms stay at her sides. "It's not all about you."

Everyone has a breaking point. Sam's surprised it's taken this long to find hers. He's not even sure what it _is_ , only that something's finally struck a nerve.

"No one ever said--" says Dean.

"No?" says Jo. "Did you ever even spend a second wondering what it was like for me after the Roadhouse? Did you? I lost my home, my best friend, everything I ever knew. For days I didn't even know if my mother was alive. And what were you worried about? Your god damn hunt."

"That was a long time ago."

"No," she says. "It wasn't. A year is not a long time." She stares hard at them both, and Sam knows it's because they _know_ damn well how short a year can be. But they also know how the few months after can seem five times as long. "And I know hell had to be pretty shitty, but it doesn't _entitle_ you to be a douchebag when you get back."

"A _what_?"

"You heard me," she says. "You're being an asshole, Dean. There were a lot of people who worked really damn hard to get you back, and what the hell are you doing with the life you got back? And what about your _brother_ , Dean? You taken a look at what you're doing to him lately?"

Sam never asked her to bring him into this, doesn't want her to, but it's too late for that now. Dean's eyes shoot over to him and nobody's going to leave it there.

"I don't see how this is any of your business," says Dean.

"Oh, you _made_ it my business," she says. "You made it my business when you showed up here in my town. You made it my business when you fucked me. You made it my business when you stuck around."

"Sam's fine."

"No, actually, Sam's _not_ fine," says Sam, and is surprised to realize that it really was him saying that, not Jo.

"Excuse me?"

"Sam's _not_ fine," he says again. "Sam's wondering where the hell his brother went and if he's ever going to get him back again, because he sure as hell hasn't seen much of him the past couple of months."

"Or for quite a while before that," says Dean, his words edged and out for blood, "but then you knew exactly where I was then, didn't you, Sammy?"

Hell's the trump card that always wins.

"That's just the shit I'm talking about," Jo says, like the game isn't over for her. "And I get it, I get that you're probably still in hell every time you close your eyes--"

"No, you don't get it," said Dean. "Neither of you get it. The only thing I _don't_ have nightmares about is hell."

"Dean," says Sam. "I know you do."

"No," says Dean, "I _don't_. I have nightmares about every other damn thing I've faced, blood and guts and screaming and flames, and I don't remember a god damn thing about hell. Now tell me, what could be so terrible that, after everything I've seen, my mind still needs to replace it with the horror I know just to keep me sane? Do you know? Can you _imagine_?"

It's the most Sam's heard him say about it since the moment he got Dean back.

"I think maybe we should...." starts Sam, until he realizes he doesn't know how to finish it. He thinks they should what? Talk it out? Run away? Take a break?

"I have an appointment in a few minutes," says Jo, but not quick enough to rescue Sam from his hesitation. It's still right there, balls out, for everyone to see. "You should meet me after, Dean. It's about the missing persons."

And it's weird to realize that they can yell at each other like nobody's business, but in the end they're not stopping whatever it is they have. They go about their business, and Sam throws off everything else he has planned to go out for a few drinks before returning to the motel too late to run into anything he doesn't want to see.

:::

Maybe it's exactly the wrong time to do this, but Sam wonders if maybe Jo's been right all along. Or at least a little bit right, right about a few things. Like that Sam's letting himself be pulled instead of doing the pushing he should've been doing all along.

"What are you doing, Dean?" he says, even when he's still not sure he wants the answer, and not sure he'll understand it even if he gets one. "All of this. What are you _doing_?

"There are some things you can't fix, Sammy," he says, answering where Sam honestly expected silence. Avoidance. "You can't give me everything I need. That's all this is."

"This?" says Sam. "You mean this thing you've got going on with Jo? Is that the this you mean?"

"That's what you're asking about, isn't it?"

It is and it isn't, but it'll do. "It's not just sex. Don't tell me it's just sex."

"It's just something," says Dean. "It's just something I haven't had in a long time."

"I'm not sure you've _ever_ had this, Dean," says Sam, "and I'm not sure you know what the hell to do with it now that you do."

 _"Yeah, well maybe I need to figure that out," he says, but it's not all about him, and Sam wants it to get through that figuring his head out is fucking around with other people's. "You think I don't know that something got screwed up somewhere?"_

 _"Dean...."_

 _"You think I don't know that I'm fucked up? Fucked up even more than I always have been? I'm just hanging on the only way I can, Sammy. It's like a part of me got _lost_ someplace, and I don't know where the fuck to find it."_

"And what, you think you're going to find it here? With Jo?"

"Yeah, maybe," he says. "I'm finding something, anyway."

"And where does that leave me?" said Sam. "Why _here_? Why _her_?"

"I don't _know_ , Sam," said Dean, but he sounds like there's something he's holding back, some words that catch on his teeth and don't quite make it out. "I don't know why now. You don't think I would tell you if I knew?"

"You haven't exactly been the sharing kind since you got back, Dean. Why didn't you tell me about the nightmares? I've been waking you up from them for weeks."

"They don't matter," said Dean. "We've always had god damn nightmares. They'll pass."

"Maybe they'd pass sooner if I knew what was going on."

"It doesn't work that way, Sam."

"How does it work, then?"

"I don't _know_ ," said Dean. "I haven't exactly done this before. How about you go to hell and come back and figure out how you're supposed to deal with that?"

The bitch of it is, Sam _would_. If that would fix this he _would_ , and that's a thought that's too damn big for him to dwell on right now.

"Have you considered some therapeutic massage?" he suggests instead. "Maybe a sharing circle? Or we could just get some international coffee and have a nice long chat--"

"Girl to girl?" says Dean, but he's almost cracking a smile. "Fuck you, Sam."

"Seriously, Dean, just talk to me once in a while, all right? I'm flailing here as much as you are. But let me tell you something. This shit you've been doing up till now? Isn't working."

"Well then, there's your answer," says Dean, grabbing hold of that as soon as it's thrown to him. "One thing wasn't working, so I'm trying another."

"Dean...."

"Look, maybe I just wasn't ready till now, all right? Can we stop talking about this now?"

It doesn't answer everything, but it's enough of a start that Sam lets it go at that.

:::

Jo finds him when Dean's back at the motel, showering off a day's grime from god knows where. He smelled bad enough that Sam just didn't want to ask.

"Hey," he says, back to not quite meeting her eyes. "Dean's not here yet."

"Good," she says, and sits down. "Look I didn't mean to--"

"Don't worry about it," he interrupts. "Maybe it needed to be said. I don't even know."

"Well, it didn't have to go down like that," she concedes. It's as much apology as either of them needs, and that either of them is going to give. "I'm just so tired of other people's shit, Sam. Other people's shit's been taking over my life for as long as I can remember."

"He just needs his space," says Sam. "We know he's making a mess of his life. _He_ knows he's making a mess of his life. He just needs the space to get his shit back together again, and I shouldn’t have--"

"Love's fucking blind," she says, "even when it's brotherly love." Sam's not sure she's not a little blinded too, but he lets that go. "I'm pretty sure that space isn't actually what he needs."

"No, maybe not," Sam admits, with increasingly-vivid hindsight. "Give him enough rope and he just hangs himself with it?"

"That's not what I--" Jo starts, then shakes her head. "Yeah, maybe he does. What do I know, right? But if you asked me, I'd say Dean just needs to feel like he belongs here again."

Jo doesn't know what it's been like, doesn't know what the nights are like when Dean's trying to pretend he's not shaking and Sam's trying to pretend he's not sitting there holding him. She doesn't know what Sam's been doing to make Dean feel like things are the way they used to be. But she knows more than Sam ever gave her credit for before.

"I heard a little about you, when we were on the road," he says finally, wonders if this kind of conversation is welcome. "Heard you saved some kids out in Maine last year."

"Kids are the hardest," she says, letting him change the subject even though it's not really much of a drift at all, "and my Spanish is terrible. They didn't know what was going on. It was a rough job."

"Well, aren't they all, in their way," he says, chuckling into his hands, a barely audible sound.

"I hear you dealt with that spook out in Kenosha by yourself."

"That's not the same thing," he says, shaking his head. He's worked jobs on his own before. It was just a restless spirit, he didn't _need_ Dean. It's hardly even worth mentioning.

Her hand rests on the table close to his and she looks sad, sadder than Sam's seen her, or maybe this is what melancholy looks like. "You know, if things had been different...." she says, and Sam doesn't admit he's sometimes thought the same thing.

"But they're not," he says.

"They could be," she says. "I don't let other people tell me what's right for me anymore."

"If Dean's your type, then I'm not," he says. "The two things are mutually exclusive, believe me. The one thing Dean and I never had to do when we were younger was fight over girls."

"Then I guess maybe you're more alike than you used to be," she says, but Sam doesn't think it's like that. He doesn't think that's what this is. He doesn't _know_ what this is. "And maybe none of us are all that young anymore."

:::

Something's different again the next time Sam and Dean are alone back at the motel, absent of stray clothing items though not of the scent of someone else. Sam doesn't say anything but his look tells Dean that he knows, that he sees.

Dean's in a worn out armchair, his legs up on the bed, pink and scrubbed clean.

"So Jo's tracked down this Jennifer girl's old boyfriend," says Sam, his opening gambit, "said she was heading over there for a chat."

"Yeah, she said something about that," said Dean, crossing his feet at the ankle.

"Heading over there alone," Sam added, but Dean's response didn't change. "Why'd Ellen call you, Dean? Why'd Ellen call _you_?"

"She didn't," Dean admits after a moment. "Bobby did."

"What? Why?"

"That's between me and Bobby," says Dean. "Listen, don't tell Jo, all right? She'll just ask questions she doesn't really want the answers to. It's better this way."

"Don't you think that's her choice to make?"

"Ellen would've called, if she'd known. Let's just leave it at that. Seriously, I don't want to talk about this, Sam."

Sam lets that marinate for a little while, weighs his choices, weighs everyone else's too. "Bobby's call didn't have a whole lot to do with Jo, did it?"

Dean's silence tells him everything he needs to know about that.

"All right," says Sam. "All right. Look, whatever the hell else is going on, we've still got this case and there was another fire last night. I'm going to head across the lake tomorrow, bring some bolt cutters and rubber boots and check out those houses. I'd like it if you came with me."

"You'd _like_ it?"

"Yeah, Dean, I'd like it. I'd like it if you had my back again. I'd like it if we were doing this _together_ , because being apart sucks, all right?"

"I always did wield a mean set of bolt cutters," says Dean after a moment, and fuck if Sam doesn't smile at that. Smile broad and white and collapse down onto the bed next to Dean's feet, mission accomplished.

Right now it's all he can ask for, and all he wants.

:::

Dean's ankle deep in muddy water when he stops dead and lets out a muffled sound of disbelief.

Sam'd been given a heads up that some of the land around this particular burnt out cottage had gotten a little marshy in the intervening years, but he hadn't expected to be wading through what was effectively a swamp, bugs and slimy things and water where you least expected it, and least wanted it to be. Dean's been making sounds under his breath ever since they got there, but this one's different.

"What, what is it?" said Sam. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Sammy," he says, and Sam feels a hand on his chin, turning his head in the direction Dean's looking. "That seem the slightest bit familiar to you?"

"I'll be damned," Sam blurts out. From this angle, around the side that's taken them about twenty minutes to reach, the remaining timbers of the burnt out cottage form a pattern exactly like the lines of the mystery symbol. "This is seeming like a much less terrible idea than it did fifteen minutes ago."

Somehow it just seems right, that they figure it out when they're out here together.

"Come on," says Dean, plowing his way closer to the foundations of the house, still looking pretty solid after all these years. The pattern doesn't get any less distinct as they get closer; it's not just a trick of the eye. Those lines, those boards, it all matches up.

The sun's starting to go down as they walk the perimeter, looking for something that stands out, something that doesn't fit. But they both already know they likely need to get inside if they're going to find anything. And inside looks like they're going to need more than a pair of rubber boots to get around in it.

"They're being sold," Dean says out of the blue when they're back where they started, looking up at the house but within sight of the car. "All of them."

"What?" says Sam, pressing his hand against one of the timbers and hearing it give a faint creak.

"The deal's all but done, just some t's to cross and i's to dot. They're coming in and bulldozing all of this, filling in the swamp and repurposing the land for a park or something. It's going public in a week or two if the deal goes through."

"You mean you really worked the real estate office?" says Sam, sounding more surprised than he means to.

"What did you _think_ I was doing over there?" says Dean, but he grins and doesn't wait for an answer. "I think we've found what we're looking for. What do you say we come back later with some flashlights and the rest of our gear?"

"Not to mention dry socks," says Sam, and gives the husk one last, long look before starting back for the car.

:::

Dean dumps his bag on the bed and heads straight into the bathroom, closing the door halfway.

Sam sets his own things down, puts a knife under his pillow and a gun in the nightstand and when he's done Dean still hasn't shut the door, hasn't really made any noise at all. Dean takes a lot of moments to himself when he doesn't think Sam's looking, but not quite like this.

He wants to say something, wants to ask about what Dean's thinking, but another part of him tries to tell him to leave well enough alone. A quieter part, as it turns out, and Sam's curiosity wins like it always does.

When Sam finally gives in and creeps up to the door to sneak a look inside, Dean is standing in front of the mirror tracing the contours of his face in his reflection. Sam knows that Dean can see him, the mirror angled just right to show the open door, but neither one of them says anything and a few moments later Sam backs away again, heads for the desk and starts rummaging loudly in the drawers.

"You want something to eat?" he says, pitched just loud enough for Dean to hear.

"You mean something that doesn't come out of that vending machine in the front office?" Dean replies, about a beat too late. "I'm pretty sure there are some green things in there that didn't start out that way."

"There's some little pizza place that delivers," says Sam, finally locating the directory. "Unless you want to--"

"Sounds good to me."

Dean finally comes out of the bathroom and shuts out the light with a slap of his hand. If Dean really doesn't want to go out then Sam's the first guy to let him just stay in with him for once, see what happens. He's pretty sure the world won't end, and maybe Dean needs to see that too.

"We can stuff our faces and see if this crappy town gets more than three stations."

"Can't remember the last time we did that," says Sam, and orders a jumbo deluxe pizza, whatever the hell they put on that, remembering just in time that there's still some beer left in the trunk of the car.

"Me neither, says Dean, shoving his half-open duffel bag onto the floor, its contents spilling out onto the carpet. He makes like he's going to clean up after himself, then just stops halfway and Sam realises he's staring at his reflection in the brass bedside lamp.

"What?" says Sam after a few moments. "What is it?"

"I’m alive, Sam," he says, then flops back onto the sagging bed and stares up at the ceiling.

"What, did you just figure that out?"

"Yeah, I think maybe I did."

Sam exhales, waits a moment, then says, "Should I have gotten a cake? I'm not sure the local bakery covers this kind of occasion...."

"Shut up," says Dean and throws a wadded up sock at his head.

:::

It's a moment Sam's been waiting for and it arrives like a whisper. They go back in the early morning, both them and Jo but it's Dean's presence that really matters. He's _there_ , really there, and it's the sheer normality of the situation - by Winchester standards of normal - that hits Sam so hard.

Their footprints are lost in the swampy mess but it's obvious on the higher ground that someone's been there. A lot of someones, not just Sam and Dean, signs of their presence clear in the morning light like they hadn't been the evening before.

"Jesus, you guys weren't kidding," says Jo, and she's unwrapping her arm, the burn marks turned dark scabs now but still showing the pattern of lines that matches the house. "It's like I've got a damn map burnt into me."

Sam is inspired to take her at her word, moving in close enough to look at it over her shoulder, match it line for line, mark for mark.

"What's this?" he says finally, pointing to something that looks like an x in the lower left of the mark. It's the only thing that doesn't match anything he can see in front of him. Jo just shrugs and Sam moves away far enough for Dean to get a good look, too.

"Oh, you've _got_ to be kidding me."

"What?" says Jo irritably, moving to cover up the burn again.

"X marks the spot?" says Dean, looking away from her and at the building again. "Seriously?"

Sam can't help the grin that spreads across his face any more than he can help the laugh that escapes a moment later. "I think I like this Jennifer girl," he admits, then starts moving towards the house again, breathing a sigh of relief when he hits the slightly higher ground it's built upon and his footsteps become easier.

"I don't trust this floor," is the first thing Jo says when she looks inside. Sam can't say he blames her; anything wood that's been sitting empty under these conditions for this long is suspect.

"I've got your back," he says though, and isn't sure whether he's saying it to Jo or Dean or both. "Follow the floor joists and try not to step in between." Like crawling through an attic, something he figures all of them have more than enough experience with.

Once they're inside, Dean in the lead and Sam bringing up the rear with Jo in between, it's not hard for the trained eye to spot the charred lump in a distant corner as something that doesn't belong. It's the only thing that's not wood or tile, the area around it burnt a deeper shade of black.

"A fire in a fire," says Dean, walking carefully along the unstable floor to the bundle in the far corner, jerking back one time when the half-rotted wood starts to give way. "No wonder no one ever noticed."

"She was right here all along," says Sam. "And how many people drive past her every day?"

"Every single person who wants to head west out of town," says Jo.

"She didn't want revenge, she just wanted somebody to find her," says Dean, pulling the burnt wool blanket back and exposing the charred flesh and bones beneath. "A fire in a fire in a fire. I think we're not going to have any more problems."

Everything's quiet, and just for this moment Sam wishes he could hear what everyone else is thinking as they look at the long-lost body of Jennifer Wilcox. This one's just not like all their other hunts; it hasn't been right from the start.

"I'll go get the salt and the matches," says Dean finally. "We can do this right here."

But something about that just doesn't sit right with Sam.

"She went to a lot of trouble to be found," he says, resting his hand on Dean's arm so he can't go quite yet. "Let's let her, all right?"

"We can't just leave the body here like this," says Dean. "You know what has to be done, Sam."

And Sam knows, he's known since he was about nine years old, but sometimes - not often, but once in a while - sometimes there's another way.

"I'll do it," says Jo, reminding both of them that she's still there. Maybe reminding them that this is still _her_ hunt. "We call the cops and let them find her, then once she's in the ground and the whole thing settles down I'll come back and do it. Everyone's happy."

Including Jennifer Wilcox.

"She just wanted to be found," Dean says again, like he somehow just gets her, and finally he nods his head, agreement that Sam's right and acknowledgement that Jo's up to the job.

Sam watches him for a little longer, Dean's eyes never leaving the charred body, and thinks there are a lot of different ways to be found.

:::

Sam doesn't mean to walk in on them; Jo's got a shift at the bar after they finish spinning a tale for the cops, or Sam thinks she does, which means Dean should be hanging around the place till closing. Sam doesn't mean to slide his key in the lock and step in on Jo's naked front and Dean's naked back, moving together on Sam's bed.

He freezes by the door, silent with his back pressed against the wall, but gravity and momentum eventually betray him and the door clicks audibly shut. It doesn't occur to him until it's closed, with him on the inside, that he had plenty of time to leave.

Dean's inside her, rolling his hips, eyes closed, and he doesn't seem to hear anything but Jo's quiet moans and the rush of blood in his own ears. Jo sees, though. There's the blush of surprise, faint embarrassment, but she doesn't ask him to go, doesn't look at him angrily, and doesn't _stop_.

And so Sam stays and watches her come, arching up against the headboard as Dean's cock and hand work between her legs, watches as _Dean_ comes, loud and completely uninhibited. And it's his turn to turn a humiliated red as Dean looks back over his shoulder, rolling his eyes even while he's still balls-deep inside Jo.

"Oh, you've _got_ to be kidding me."

Sam looks away as Dean pulls out with a grunt and a satisfied sigh, but not so far that he doesn't see Jo reach out and rest a hand on Dean's arm to keep him in the bed before she gets up and crosses the room towards Sam.

He shivers as Jo touches him, suddenly realizing he's been anticipating that touch almost since they rode into town. It's only a brush of fingers against his wrist but he feels it everywhere, up his spine and at the base of his skull and right down to the soles of his feet.

"Figures you couldn’t have waited another twenty minutes," she says, and he's still frozen right there as her fingers trail down and tangle with his.

"I'll say," mutters Dean, reaching for his clothes, but Jo's heading back for the bed, Sam now forced to stumble along behind her, and she pulls the boxer shorts right back out of Dean's hand, tossing them on the floor on the other side of the bed.

Dean raises his eyebrows at her, at _them_ , but Jo holds her ground. "Like it's not already bad enough that my little brother's seeing me with my cock out?"

"Not exactly the first time," mutters Sam. Jo squeezes his hand, silencing him.

"We're not finished yet, Dean," she says, "and Sam's been pretty damn patient."

Sam's pretty sure, after a moment of choked surprise, that she's not just talking about those past few moments he spent frozen by the door.

He once wondered, back when all of this started, if Jo knew just what she was getting in this Dean, but it's obvious that she does and always has. She went into it with her eyes wide open, knows what she is to him, and it seems like Dean knows what he is to her too. She's got her own life now and maybe it's not Dean, it's her. Maybe _she_ 's the one who doesn't have room in it for anything more than this, especially not with a Winchester.

That Sam's there at all is obviously Jo's choice, but Dean doesn't even make a token protest after that. And hell, they've shared pretty much everything else, secrets, guts and viruses. This is just one more tiny step after all that.

He lets Jo strip off his shirt, and looks at her with something like thanks in his eyes until she practically laughs in his face. "I'm not giving, I'm _taking_ ," she says, "and it'd help if you'd notice the difference."

Okay, so maybe it's not a gift or a revelation. Maybe this is just one of those things that happens in life, a moment he'll look back in fondly a few years from now. But there's a little more significance to it than Sam getting laid for the first time in months and he figures they all probably know it, even if it's never said.

Dean waits, lounging back against the headboard with the remote control in his hand like he's thinking about watching the news while waiting for them, but the television never glows to life and as Sam's jeans are stripped down his legs, tossed away with other necessary items, so too is the remote.

He's already embarrassingly hard and still feels a little like he's been caught watching porn, like he's about to be taught a lesson, but Jo doesn't hesitate with him anymore. Sam isn't sure if that's because she's in the heady space of already having come at least once, or because now that the wall between them has been breached, it's all coming tumbling down.

Her hand closes around him as he's pushed back on the bed, other hand on his chest and Dean's closing briefly over his shoulder as they settle in. A little shame lingers, in the nearly invisible flush of his skin, but there's enough want to get past it, to let Jo jerk him off while his brother is not just there but watching. Involved.

It could be just this if that's what he wants, but Sam doesn't want it to be over that soon, doesn't want to come all over his stomach and have that be all he ever gets. The decision to stay is long behind him, and with it the implicit decision that he's going to _do_ this, even if he hadn't realized it at the time. He pulls Jo's hand off him, despite his arm shaking with the desire for her to just _let him come_ , and he uses his leverage to roll them over until he's straddling her, kissing down her body before anyone can catch their breath.

"Yeah," he thinks he hears Dean breathe, but whether Dean actually said anything or not he's moving now, back behind them and out of Sam's range of vision. Jo's eyes watch Dean a little longer, then fix back on Sam as his lips move down over her stomach, his hands ghost over her hips and spread her legs with just a little pressure to her inner thighs.

He knows Dean's done this with her, and wonders briefly if she's going to compare.

Sam feels Dean's fingers in his hair as he presses his mouth to Jo's cunt, tongues her sharply. He can hear, muffled, the noises that Dean is making behind him and wonders if Dean's going to come in his hair because that's the closest he can get to being between Jo's legs with him. He wonders and he doesn't care.

It's _relief_ , in a way Sam never thought he'd feel relief again. Like something dark and oppressive has just been lifted off his shoulders and left behind. And yeah, maybe something new will settle there after, something different and a little frightening, but he'll deal with that when the time comes.

He takes it slow, licking at her in long, broad swipes. She's already hot and wet and a little used, and Sam feels almost like it was him with her all along, like he's the one who got her to this point. He brings two fingers up and they slide into her smoothly, slick within moments and rubbing inside her as he sucks at her clit, soft and then hard as she gasps and quivers beneath him. He wants to fuck her but instead he rocks against the bed, moving his hips in time with his fingers.

His whole body is hot, one massive rush of blood, and he slides his tongue in with his fingers, noses against her and presses his whole face between her legs, unaware of anything else anymore except her body and his. And Dean's.

She grips his hair as she comes, her fingers tangling with Dean's there, and he wonders if she's actually coming _again_ , if that first quiver was really the sign of more things to come. This time it's enough for her; she squeezes him briefly with her thighs and Sam pulls away, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand even though it does little and his face is still slick with her when he drops it again.

He closes his eyes and slumps onto his back and _some_ one goes down on him a moment later. He figures it's Jo because there's no rasp of stubble, no large, familiar hand on his side or on his thigh, but he can't be bothered to find out for sure and frankly, at this point he's not even sure he cares. Whoever it is, they make him come in about a minute flat, and Sam is just too turned on to be able to give them warning before he does, feels a throat convulse, feels someone swallow him down without even a whimper of complaint.

When he opens his eyes again they're kissing, open-mouthed and wet but not the start of something new, more the winding down of something that's finally done.

He sleeps right where he is, sprawled with one arm hanging off the bed. Dean's at his side a little while later, back pressed against Sam and his arm around Jo who finally drifts off at the other edge of the bed.

Dean sleeps like the dead, which isn't a comparison that Sam likes to make but it's apt. He doesn't even do more than twitch when Jo slides out of bed again hours later, gathers the scattered bits of her clothing and leaves them there together. Sam wakes but he doesn't say anything, doesn't even lift his head. She wanted what they had last night but she doesn't want _this_ , doesn't want the afterward, and she seems pretty content to slip out almost unnoticed.

But where everyone else wants the intimacy of bed, Sam wants the intimacy of afterward, of the rest. Sam wants to see his brother safe and happy again, safe and comfortable, safe and ready to pick up where they left off. Sam wants to be the one to be there for him.

And yeah, maybe Sam can't give Dean everything he needs, but he can come pretty damn close.

:::

Things are a little different, Sam and Dean moving around one another with a bit more care than they did before, but they aren't _bad_. Sam's not sure what he was expecting but it was something a lot more awkward than this. Something more like the morning after a one night stand, when no one knows quite how things are supposed to shake out.

"Weird hunt," he says, but that doesn't even begin to sum up how he feels about it. About everything, but the hunt's easier to talk about. "I almost feel like we were... incidental."

"We found the body of a missing person and put her spirit at rest, Sammy," says Dean. "That's not exactly incidental."

"Yeah I know, but... you know what a catalyst is?" says Sam, lying back on his bad and staring at the ceiling.

"I took high school science too, genius," says Dean. "I know what a damn catalyst is."

"Yeah," says Sam and breathes out a sigh without explaining any further. There are baby spiders on the ceiling, a half dozen of them, and he watches their progress across the wide, waterstained expanse until they disappear into the molding around the bathroom door.

"Yeah," Dean echoes him after a long while, and turns on the light to start their day.

:::

They say goodbye at the door of the bar, a kiss on the cheek for each of them, like no one can be trusted with more. Dean has a cheeseburger in a styrofoam container and his sunglasses firmly on his face and he looks like he really is ready to move on.

"Come back this way some time," she says, tying her hair back with a swift, practiced motion. "I'm staying put till Christmas."

"And then what?" says Sam, but Jo just shrugs and smiles at him.

"Wherever the world takes me, I guess," she says. "You want me to give you guys a call when everything's squared away here?"

"Yeah," says Dean, nodding without looking at her, his eyes on the menu behind the counter like he might need something else for the road. Then, abruptly, he looks at her and smiles. "Yeah, you do that. Sam, you ready to go?"

"Ready whenever you are."

They're outside the town limits before long, and Sam remembers that flowerbed from the drive in, only where once it had been filled with the corpses of flowers now it's been tilled over, waiting for spring to come again.

"So where to next?" he says, pulling out the map.

"Eden, Texas," says Dean, grinning and popping a tape in, cranking the volume.

"So what's in Eden?" says Sam, finding it fairly quickly and studying the roads they'll take along the way.

"Two mysterious deaths in two weeks," says Dean, "both of them at exactly the same time of day, right down to the minute. Sounds like our kind of thing, don't you think?"

"Another hunt?"

"Another hunt," says Dean, and with that they're finally really back in the game.


End file.
